146 HOLDER 1220 I am a walking testimony of how incredible God tr - PDF document

1 14 — November 2016 ’ HOLDER 12
14 — November 2016 ’ HOLDER 12.20. I am a walking testimony of how incredible God tr&#xIm t;&#xhe W;&#xORLD;&#x REC;&#xORD7;耀&#xIm t;&#xhe W;&#xORLD;&#x REC;&#xORD7;耀uly is.That 90-character declaration is pinned atop Keni Harrison’s Twitter feed, with an attached motion-GIF that says it all: Harrison at the nish line after the London DL 100 hurdles, turning in slo-mo toward the scoreboard, competitors clapping in the background. She reads the time, her mouth opens wide and she two-hand palms her cheeks as It’s a dream scenario that played out for real—24-year-old rst-year pro breaks 28-year-old WR—and the crown jewel in a nonpareil Diamond Nonpareil in every respect but one, that is. The Kentucky grad also ran 12.24, faster than every hurdler in history save herself and former WR holder Yordanka Donkova, put up 8 of the 10 fastest times of the year and won 10 of her 11 nals. Kendra Rae “Keni” Harrison was born September 18, 1992, in Nashville, Tennessee; 100H—12.20 WR, AR (12.50—3, 4 C) (also 12.24—x, =3W; 2, 2 A); 400H—54.09 (5, 6 C); Clayton, North Carolina, High ’11; Kentucky ’15; now represents adidas T&FN INTERVIEW Track & Field News Keni Harrison November 2016 — 15 They pushed me and that’s when I realized this is what I want to do, and my senior year in college winning my rst NCAA denitely capitalized that. I just told myself, ‘This is one of my dreams, to do this in my event.’ Did you make any technical breakthroughs early in college? No. I was just trying to nd myself at Clemson. Going from being No. 1 in high school to not being No. 1 in college was hard for me. My condence was not there and it was a process that I needed to go through to get to where I am now. Do you watch the YouTube video of [laughs] Yeah. It’s motivation and it still feels unreal that I actually broke it so watching that makes me realize, ‘It’s real, Keni, you did it and a lot of people saw.’ Now you’re at that rare moment where you have an entire 4-year Olympic cycle stretching out before you and some time to plan. On the clock, you’re in the very best of positions. What is the plan? Next year, we haven’t decided for sure, but I’m probably going to try to get a [World Championships] medal in the 100 hurdles. The following year is an off year so the 400 hurdles is denitely something that I want to do and an event that I want to see how fast I can run.Technically, I think I’m going to be 100% better. It’s just getting that quartermile work in and training really hard for that event. I denitely want to try to run as fast as I can, low Technique is an important thing Coach Flo [Edrick Floréal] tries to have me focus on, and I think improving my technique prove and run faster (see sidebar). You come from a family of 11 kids. Are the reports true that track’s appeal was that it allowed you to stand out among all those brothers and sisters?Harrison: [laughs] Yeah, doing sports was one way that I was able to get my parents’ attention and whatever sport that I wanted to do, I always excelled at it. I always liked Did any of your ters ran cross country but it was just for leisure and that kind of thing. Everyone in my family has done a sport growing up and everyone was able to do something that they enjoyed. My parents were fortunate enough to allow us to do what we wanted to do. I told them I wanted to try gymnastics and they put me in gymnastics. I want to do cheerleading now, they Some of my siblings are more artistic so they wen

2 t and did stuff with that. We were just
t and did stuff with that. We were just really fortunate to do what we desired. Was there any I think it was that it was a combination of all the sports ibility to be able to open my leg and snap it back down. My soccer skills, just having a lot of speed and being able to stop and go. So just a combination of all my sports that I played and being really good at it when I didn’t really train that hard for it. You won the New Balance Nationals high school title your senior year and then that summer the USATF Youth 400H. When did you really start thinking you could maybe I trained with the lins and Bridgette Owens and all of them when I went to Clemson [where she schooled for 2 years] and they were better than me. I The Tech Side Of HurdlingHow did Kendra Harrison’s technique improve “I would probably say running off my trail leg and actually using my trail leg. A lot of times I just rely on my speed, and I realize I can’t do that if I want to run fast because when the end of the race comes that’s when you start hitting the hurdles. “So xing my trail leg and also my height in between the hurdle and myself. The lower I am to the hurdle, the easier it is to execute but it also is a risk because if I do mess up then it could be Does “run off your trail leg,” mean the impulse off the ground as you launch yourself toward the hurdle or the motion of bringing it through over the hurdle?“A little bit of both. Force actually pushing off the ground and pulling it all the way through so I can run off of it. The goal is to make it seem like I’m just running instead of hurdling. You know, get back into that running position as fast What does it feel like when you’re doing all that extremely well as you did this season?“I don’t really know how it feels but in my mind I just feel like I’m running. It’s not ‘1-2-3 hurdle, 1-2-3 hurdle,’ it’s ‘run-run-run-run-run.’ If you set up the beginning, basically the rest of the race is just your rhythm and just staying as relaxed as possible as well as trying to execute The Bible Of The Sport 16 — November 2016 Taking a break from the 100 hurdles will do me some good and I want to show the world that I can do both events. It’s never been done and I’m just trying to make my name in track What were your thoughts seeing the I kind of gured that they would, I predicted that they would and I hoped that they would. They were the strongest hurdlers out there and to have all three of them in the I accepted it. I congratulated them and I put that in the back of my mind as something that I want to do. It just motivates me and that’s why I smiled, because it just makes me train even harder just to watch what they have accomplished and know that I have the Apart from all you accomplished on the track, how was your rst year on the pro circuit? I liked it. It was intense but I like that intensity. I like to be able to run against the best and just being around all the athletes I’d never really traveled as much as I have been so that was cool to experience. Overall, I thing else. I love training and I love competing.tency into the years ahead. Any thoughts on what you’ve learned that will help you pick the winning rhythm back up next year?I just walk straight over there and I watch it. I try to do it again, I try to improve.When we’re at practice it’s just on his iPhone but once we go to his ofce we can put it on a bigger screen and he puts it on a ash drive for me to take home, and I put it on my screen Any nal thoughts as yo

3 u look toward I just want to continue t
u look toward I just want to continue to improve and continue doing what I love. Coach Flo is a great coach and we’re able to connect and I’m able to listen to him and do everything that he says. He believes in me and to have that support is amazing. I think that’s why I’ve Even when I didn’t make the Olympic team, he pushed me to keep going and to go back out there. You know, that’s hard to do, that’s probably one of the hardest things I’ve had to overcome and if I hadn’t listened to him I wouldn’t have broken the World Record. Harrison — continued Life Isn’t All About Track & FieldYou’ll never guess what Keni Harrison likes to do to relax when she’s not on the track.“I like sleeping,” she says. “Sleeping is probably my favorite thing to do. It’s simple but it’s something I enjoy. Coach Flo tries to not allow But I mentor at a local elementary school a couple times a week because I do have a lot of free time on my hands. Other than that, I just like “It’s only a couple of kids at a time and I help them with homework or whatever the teacher says they’re struggling with, or I just play games with them, get to know them. They’re able to tell me about their lives and I’m able to tell them “School was something that I never really enjoyed so to show them how important it is to get through school and to get your education is just giving back to the community, and that’s And when she nally retires?“I know I want to go into a tness eld, whether that’s being a personal trainer or [something like that]. I want to be able to help others and show them what I’ve learned over the years of being an athlete—how to eat right, how to exercise, I think Coach Flo and I sat down the other day and talked about my future goals and how we’re going to accomplish them. We looked at some things that I did really well this season: being able to get treatment every single day, getting an ice bath every day, eating right, doing abs every night. Doing stuff like that is what got me to the season thing that we’re going to duplicate but we’re also going to add some things: more stretching, more lm Like I said, technique is the most important thing that he teaches us, so having more one-on-one work. He is a college coach so sometimes I don’t get that one-on-one work like I ing that. Just small things like that; it’s nothing really big, nothing too big to ing the obvious, do you do a Yeah, drills are Coach Flo’s favorite thing to do. If we don’t understand a drill he will create another drill that we can do. And once we’ve perfected all the drills and we kind of get an idea of what it’s supposed to feel like, that’s when we start going a little faster. Each time we do the drill we’ll go faster and faster so we can be able to do it coming out of the You mentioned watching lm. Do you have that pro Yeah, probably. Watching lm is something that I like to do. I don’t really look at it as a chore or anything like that. I look at it as an opportunity to x what I’m doing wrong.With this technology now days you can basically do anything that you want on the phone—draw on it or that You can put two hurdle videos right next to each other. The technology now days just makes watching lm a lot more fun and enjoyable. You do that while your prac Yes. I’ll do a rep and it will be lmed and right when I’m done There was no Rio podium for Harrison, but she Trophy and the $40,000 that